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A Coronavirus quiz (part I)

I spend (too much) time sniping at social media friends who post or share thoughts such as ‘why doesn’t the President just do something’ or ‘why can’t we be like country X?’ I generally respond with hard questions like “what specifically do you want him to do?” or “what do you think that country X is doing that we can/should emulate?”

To test your knowledge (and to kill some time) of who-is-doing-what in the world of coronavirus policy, here is a sampling of national approaches. Your task is to guess which country I’m describing in each case. I’ll describe them in some detail, but I can’t give all the data in every case, or else it would be too easy. And no, the answers aren’t at the bottom of the post; I wouldn’t want to put any of my friends in the near occasion of the sin of cheating! Part II will contain the answers, and some commentary. If you’re really bored or bold, put your answers (questions? comments!) in the comments section.

Here goes (the use of terms country/state/nation and the letter are NOT clues):

Country A was the among the earliest to announce a travel ban on China, pending the arrival of tourists for the busy Chinese New Year celebration, and later enacted a total ban on immigration. It has only managed to ramp up to 50,000 tests a day, yet its case fatality rate (hereafter CFR) hovers near one percent, and it is starting to relax restrictions on outdoor activities. Country A?

Nation B was among the first to ramp up viral test production, but has never completed more than 25,000 daily viral tests. It eschewed a national lockdown, and businesses and public spaces remain open. Instead, it deployed strict quarantines of areas where it detected an outbreak in progress. It also deployed a series of apps for contact tracing, and made failing to carry cell phones with these apps a crime punishable by several thousand dollar fines. Nation B?

State C initially acted like the virus was “under control.” Eventually its leadership decided they had a problem on their hands and ramped up testing from nothing to hundreds of thousands daily. Its largest city is also its pandemic epicenter, and the national government is continuing to argue with state and local officials about responsibility for stringent quarantine measures. It hasn’t flattened the curve, yet, but is considering how to relax restrictions in light of the May holiday season. State C?

Country D is still open for business, although without large gatherings. It has experienced several surges in cases and deaths, but its medical system has not been overwhelmed. It believes its relaxed rules and emphasis on social distancing is far more sustainable for the months-to-years before a vaccine is developed, and that its CFR–now higher–will eventually be the same as its neighbors who have shut their economies down. Country D?

Nation E was the first to warn against Chinese claims on the coronavirus. It enacted strict border controls, then tightened them. Its fines for violating quarantine or contact tracing rules continue to rise (above $10,000 US). It investigates and enforces fraudulent news coverage (such as a claimed toilet paper shortage) to the tune of US $100,000 fines. It emphasized ramping up mask production, then decreed controls on sales to ensure everyone has and wears them. It has practically eradicated the disease. Nation E?

State F started out slowly, hoping to achieve herd immunity by simply protecting vulnerable populations and relying on its universal health service. As cases and deaths mounted, it engaged in a full reverse, enacting a lockdown and ramping up testing. It seems to have weathered the worst, but still has the second highest number of daily deaths. State F?

Country G was one of the world leaders in responding to the coronavirus. It enacted early and effective social distancing, restricted immigration, provided free health services, mass testing, and contact tracing. Its government is unusually effective and efficient, yet it suddenly finds itself with a spike in new cases and the most in its region. Country G?

Nation H is trying a little bit of everything. It has apparently past the peak in new cases and deaths, but the spread is uneven: urban areas were hard hit, while other regions not so much (yet). Some areas are reopening, while others still fear having overrun medical facilities. Testing is on the rise, but the public’s willingness to maintain strict lockdown conditions is waning. Nation H?

State I enacted the first and most extensive lockdown in the Western world. Its higher CFR appears to be due to a perfect storm of older victims, inadequate emergency facilities, and the bad luck to being one of the first places hit hardest. Still, it has turned the corner on cases and deaths and is preparing to loosen restrictions. State I?

Country J has the most cases and deaths in its region. Its leader has encouraged public protests against state lockdowns, and engages in a running public debate with the press and medical officials. That leader still says coronavirus is no worse “than the flu” and refuses to wear a facemask. County J?

Nation K was initially hard hit, but enforced a tight regional lockdown and now has no deaths, officially. It fears a recurrence due to foreign visitors, which it is tightly controlling, and questions the account that the virus originated in China. Nation K?

State L’s leaders insist they are fully prepared in terms of tests, ventilators, and hospital beds due to a national health system. However, their case count and deaths continue to rise, and hospital workers have been especially hard hit. The largest city is the pandemic epicenter, but their leader has only recently and reluctantly given up his well-attended political rallies. State L?

Country M is a world leader in testing per capita and total tests. It is in the top five for total numbers of cases, but has the best CFR among them. It attributes its success to younger initial victims, more testing, and well-resourced emergency rooms. The national lockdown is strongly supported, but more than a thousand protestors gathered in the capital last week. Country M?

Nation N has an older, more densely situated population, making it very vulnerable. But it is also known for high technology and cultural compliance, so its early low infection and death rates seemed to indicate success at limiting movement and using contact tracing. But it wasn’t testing very much, and now its daily deaths are increasing, causing its leaders to fear they missed an opportunity to avoid a tragedy. Nation N?

State O was late to the game but acted boldly, enacting a nationwide shutdown, which immediately backfired as millions of poor migrants began walking hundreds of miles to return home from the cities where they worked. The government fears that official data hides the magnitude of the crisis, and is preparing to blame a religious minority if a catastrophe ensues. State O?

There you have it: fifteen examples. Choose some or do them all (what else do you have to do?)! There are some tricky ones, and a few red herrings thrown in. Answers in the next post.

To Phase Three or not to Phase Three

That is the question. Mexico is entering into Phase three (according to Presidente AMLO), which is the peak of the epidemic. The government announced new restrictions: mandating the wearing of masks in all public spaces (even walking the dog or driving the car); limiting movement to essential activities (buying groceries, getting medicine, etc.); and basically instructing everyone sixty years old or older to stay home all the time. I have never been happier to be fifty-nine years and six months old.

Our local leader, the Presidente (Mayor) of Chapala, banned all sales of alcohol at grocery and convenience stores, due to the fact that ‘it was unfair’ to the liquor stores which had been deemed non-essential. Luckily, he reversed that decision a few days later. On the positive side, he noted that we have no confirmed cases locally, that the roadside checks had discouraged thousands of unwanted holiday visitors last week, and that he would not be using the jail times and fines authorized under law, as the people were complying of their own free will. An excellent example of the concept of liberty as “the right to do what one ought” as opposed to “the freedom to do want one wants.”

On the negative side, the more stringent restrictions closed our local club, so no more tennis or gym access (you feel our tears, I know!). Judy and I have collected an assortment of exercise gear over the decades, so I dug out the box and we selected various implements of personal destruction. Judy went back to her kettlebells, with an obligatory case of hamburger hands, while I did a variety of improvised stretches, hand-weights, stretch bands, a medicine ball, and jumped rope up on the mirador. I played music loud so I couldn’t hear the neighbors laughing!

Why I don’t do kettlebells: hamburger hands.

Judy got stopped by the policia coming back from the local farmacia: she had to show her license to explain why she was heading that direction (home). The government announced that restrictions will be extended until May 30th, except for smaller communities with no or few cases. They will be allowed to resume phase one activities (more normal life, with businesses reopening) on May 18th. I haven’t seen an official list of which towns qualify, but we’re certainly in the running.

Our state, Jalisco, is in an interesting position. Guadalajara is the capital, and it is the second largest city in Mexico, with our airport being the main transit hub for cargo. Yet we’ve had far fewer cases per capita than Ciudad de Mexico or other, smaller cities. As an analogy, in the CoVid19 pandemic in Mexico, Jalisco is playing California to Mexico City’s New York. The analogy even extends to the political side, as Jalisco is the center of (more conservative) opposition to the (more liberal) central government.

There is little of the panic evident here compared to the media coverage up north. The national government has emphasized they believe they have enough emergency room beds and ventilators to cover the surge; that may be wishful thinking, but there is much more of a common understanding that this is a deadly virus and that means some people will die. Flattening the curve means limiting avoidable deaths, not evading all deaths. Mexicans have an altogether different concept of death. It is not fatalistic so much as death as seen as an eventuality. One does what one can, and sometime (eventually) one dies. We’ll see how it all plays out.

Presidente AMLO’s sky high approval ratings have dropped steadily, but mostly due to the economic effects of the shutdown. Most Mexicans work “off book” and have little savings: the closures leave many completely bereft of resources. The federal government is attempting to make payments directly to the poor, but leaving businesses to fend for themselves. The state government is trying to bail out small businesses. Again, another experiment to watch.

It seems that leaders everywhere and at all levels are groping with the same challenges: unprecedented policy proposals, uncertain models with changing data, ambiguous public willingness to abide restrictions. Some have locked down, some are loosening up, although I have yet to see anyone with a blanket reopening approach. Some are doing more testing, some are doing less–and the results vary! Almost all are social distancing and emphasizing masks. The biggest single difference I see is the amount of drama involved: Mexico (like many countries) is treating the pandemic as a singular, very significant event: a life and death one. But just that.

Elsewhere, it seems to be closer to pandemonium than a pandemic.

Testing, testing, one, two, three

Several friends have asked me about the importance of, and status of, coronavirus testing in the States. It is the single most important factor in returning to the status quo ante virus, so why is the US behind other countries? Let’s focus on virus testing today (tests to determine if one has the virus now), but what we’ll see also applies to antibody testing, certification of equipment (like ventilators) and even “proof of” processes (like testing protocols).

The President trumpets (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) the fact that the US has completed more virus tests (3.7 million, all data as of 5/19) than anybody. Which is true. The numbers change daily, but the US has done twice as many as Germany amd six times more than South Korea. Still a little behind the EU, which is a better comparable. The President’s many critics point out that total numbers of tests are not the right way to compare nations: you should compare tests adjusted for population. They are correct: it is a better way to compare, and here the US lags in forty-second place, behind such notable nations as Russia and San Marino, with the Faeroe islands leading the pack.

Let’s take a analytic look at the data, which tell an interesting story.

All scientists and health officials agree testing (in all its types) is the long pole in the tent (a military phrase meaning the thing in a sequence of things that takes the most time, thus is critical to on-time mission completion). All agree it is essential to restoring society to normal working order. All governments are trying to get to this end state: sufficient testing to achieve normalcy. No one is sure how many tests or what percentage of the population must be tested to get there (that is a judgment call, not a scientific determination), but all agree it is large. And no one is anywhere near there yet.

Data does not include Germany, as this site does not recognize Germany’s data, but the German numbers are very close to Russia’s. If you want to play with the data yourself, go here.

So per capita testing is a valid way to describe how well a country is doing on the road to getting back to normal. But let’s go back to the total testing numbers to see how they influence how to assess the progress. Only the US, Russia, Germany, and Italy have exceeded 50,000 tests daily, and the numbers are not increasing rapidly in any country. The US has achieved around 150,000 tests daily. If testing is the long pole, and everyone needs to do a lot more testing, why haven’t those numbers spiked?

Some suspect a failure in governmental leadership, so let’s compare.

Look at Germany, considered (rightly) a world leader. They had a head start on the regional crisis (it started in Italy), a favorable set of initial cases (younger by half than that of Italy), universal health care, and a world-class pharmaceutical sector. The acclaimed technocratic German administration was alert and responsive, led by the capable and experienced Chancellor Angela Merkel. They recognized testing was a challenge, and engaged both government and commercial resources on the problem. And the end result is they have done 1.7 million total tests., about 70,000 a day, with a goal of 200,000 a day.

Look at South Korea, another obviously positive case. Again, an early start at social distancing, a culture accustomed to wearing masks and willing to abide government restrictions, universal health care, good high tech manufacturing, world’s best internet penetration and adoption, and recent experience with MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, a coronavirus which hit in 2015 and left ample lessons). Which resulted in half a million total tests, stuck at 10,000 test a day.

Is Germany not as sophisticated as we imagined? Did Angela Merkel not emphasize the importance of testing? South Korea has done well in many areas, but if testing is the key, they have only tested about one percent of the population, with almost no growth in the testing rate per day. Who’s to blame in these countries?

The answer lies in a simple observation: testing is hard. It is not at all like surging to make tanks in World War II (which were cheap and functional–long unrelated anecdote at the end of this post*). If testing were easy to scale, some scientist or company or leader would have done it. If you look at the testing numbers, they roughly correspond to a nation’s pharmaceutical research and/or production capability, nothing more, nothing less. And they are increasing at a roughly the same rate, everywhere.

To paraphrase what my old Army Master Sergeant would have said, “You can crap out a a zillion M4 tanks, but you can’t crap out a zillion coronavirus tests.”

How hard can virus testing really be? Well, every year we have to prepare a new test for that season’s flu virus (not talking about the rapid diagnostic flu tests, those are a shortcut we accept). We know it will only be a variation of what has come before, we know roughly when the flu season will start, and we know many thousands of people will die without tests (and vaccines). And it takes the full year between flu seasons to get it done.

Testing itself is a complex, multi-step process: You need the different reagents, production capability for the test kits, distribution and training for end users, a system for administering the tests and collecting samples, logistics to consolidate tests and transfer them to labs, lab capacity to evaluate tests, and a system to provide results. Some parts can be streamlined: there are multiple sources for reagents and training may be simplified. The government can play a role in establishing mass testing sites and moving materials. The internet provides an easy means to transmit notifications. But building tests? Creating evaluation capability? Not easily scalable, or someone, somewhere would be doing it.

Virus testing is closer to “nuclear power” complex than to “WWII tank” difficult. No one ever said, “hey, let’s spit out a thousand or so nuclear power stations in order to move to clean energy now.” Setting aside the politics, nuclear plants are difficult to build, require costly engineering and rigorous testing, and we have no tolerance for failures of any kind (rightly so). No nation wants faulty tests, or insensitive (false negatives) ones, or nonspecific (false positives) ones. The infrastructure for making tests can’t just be inflated. They can be increased at the nargin, and we are seeing that in many countries right now. New test equipment or processes have to go back through the same rigorous protocols, so again there is no shortcut.

Some things just take time. We are right to be impatient, but wrong if we ascribe blame when there is no alternative. Perhaps the problem is we’ve become used to modern medicine’s ability to do the seemingly impossible. We’ve come to expect science and medicine to do miracles. Read that sentence twice; the non sequitur should be obvious. That is the root of the problem. When science and medicine fail, we look for someone or something to blame. It may be rational, but it may not be correct.

* Back in the US Army in Germany in the eighties, we would go out on maneuvers for weeks, tramping around the German countryside. At the end of an exercise (ENDEX), there would be a day or so pause to re-organize before heading back home to garrison. The officers would find the nearest gasthaus and go for dinner and bier with the locals. It served two purposes: first to thank the locals for indulging our tearing up their farm fields, and second to blow off steam with a schnitzel and a great beer. We’d inevitably meet up with some old German WWII vets, who always told us they fought against the Russians. (Thus began a local joke: we won WWII because when we landed, Normandy was empty, since all the Germans were on the Eastern Front). One night, there was only one German left at the stammtisch when the night ended, and after several rounds of bier and Jagermeister, he fessed up to fighting on the Western front! We had to ask: what was it like fighting the US Army? “Ja, ich hatte es gern” (I liked it) he slurred, “when you hit the American tanks, the top popped off like a champagne cork!” We all grew quiet at the weight of what he said, and what it meant. “Good thing you got that fixed!” he quickly added.

What you don’t know . . .

Can make you look foolish.

It’s starting. To be fair, it never ended, but I thought for a few brief moments sanity and restraint might rule, as the world faced a deadly virus. Perhaps people would realize that there is something more important than politics. But no.

Politicians, pundits and the talking-head classes are doing what they always do, taking credit and laying blame in the middle of a global crisis. Sadder still (to me) are the number of Facebook friends who are doing the same. You might think they would know better. But no.

There are two kinds of these instant analyses: those which hedge and identify the uncertainties and still try to make a call about what happened, and ones which grab some little factoid and run to the extreme to make a political point. Hey, pundits got to . . . pundit, right? Isn’t this what they do for a living? Don’t doctors and government officials make such statements? Yes, but no.

Emergency Room doctors have to make snap judgments with the data at hand., and they don’t always have time to explain all the assumptions under which they are working. Government leaders (and doctors speaking to the public) have to make similar policy decisions under great uncertainty, but must also appear to be confident. It is a fine art, and one which is on display (both for good and ill) right now.

Why be a tad humble, a little hesitant, a bit shy about certainty? Let me count the ways, for here is a short list of things we DO NOT KNOW about the coronavirus in particular and the crisis in general:

How many people have been infected? Because testing is miniscule everywhere, estimates are we may be orders of magnitude (100x) wrong in our number of cases, which puts all our other data under suspicion.
How many people have died? Seems like this would be a no-brainer, since the dead are pretty countable, but the recent addition of 3700 deaths in NYC (from nursing homes and at-home deaths) is a reminder we’re only catching the reported deaths. Eventually, we will be able to estimate total deaths much like we do for the seasonal flu, driving the total up. Silver lining: increases in deaths are a percentage, not an order of magnitude, so the net effect on the final data is to drive the case fatality rate down.
Does infection effect immunity? For how long? Nearly every virus confers some immunity between months and years. If this coronavirus provided no immunity, we would expect to see many re-infections, since it is so infectious. We don’t see that, and those cases we do see are more like resurgence (where a person appears recovered but the same infection lingers and then rebuilds). But we still don’t know how much immunity.
Who was patient zero and how/where/when did the virus originate and cross the species barrier? We know it was Wuhan, but China’s origin story has holes in it. Medical researchers have determined this coronavirus was not developed in a lab, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t come from one. China has two labs near Wuhan. Not everybody who got sick initially was associated with the wet market in Wuhan. Some doctors who would have known more have disappeared. We essentially know almost nothing about the initial outbreak, and that is very suspicious.
How effective are various prophylactic medicines and treatments? Still under varying trials, so again we don’t know. The President’s confidence in hydroxychloroquine is a case study is needlessly going too far: he may be wrong, he may be right. But there are consequences nonetheless.
What are the tolerances of the many new viral/antibody tests? People scream for more and faster testing, but all new tests come with a caveat: if you want it done faster, you must accept lower tolerances and accuracy. Every country makes a decision on how “good” is good enough for their tests, with resulting implications. A false positive and someone kills himself; a false negative and somebody visits grandma and kill her. Most oversight organizations are approving tests provisionally, arguing that the data derived from the increased number of tests is more important than the accuracy of those tests. It’s an interesting approach, but understand this is another unknown.
What policies mitigate the spread: border closures, social-distancing, business closures, stay-at-home, isolating the vulnerable, quarantine, case tracking? All do, but how much? Still unknown. We are engaged in a massive experiment as countries all over the world select from a menu of options. It seems obvious that early adopters gain an advantage in mitigation, but what happens if we have to keep the measures in place for an extended period of time? Eventually, people will cease to comply, and infections will re-ignite (see Singapore).
What roles do demography and culture play? Undoubtedly huge, but not yet measured. Older populations will suffer more than younger ones. Smaller and more compact states should benefit, as well as places nobody wants to–or can–visit. Urban areas might be more vulnerable, but may facilitate government action and response. Authoritarian states can lock people up or intimidate them into compliance, but then they don’t tell the truth or share information well. Some peoples practice social distancing as good manners; others the reverse. Even per capita comparisons (normally used to compare dissimilar countries) will be challenged as useful data.

All of which is to say, if you see someone saying “look how well Germany is doing” or “why can’t we be like South Korea?” or “here’s what works” be cautious. We are in the first half of the coronavirus game, and we don’t even know how to count the score. When all is said and done, there will be enough good data to make real comparisons and assess performance. And there is a small glimmer of hope we will learn the right lessons, as two of the countries which apparently are doing better this time (South Korea and Taiwan) were ones which suffered under a previous contagion and spent time learning from it.

People love to make heroes and villains. But the coronavirus is serious business, not politics. If you think anything is obvious about this crisis, think again.

Un dia en cuarentena

Mexico is under a federal state of emergency, while the state of Jalisco has even more specific guidance on social distancing, essential services, public gatherings, and masks. Stores are closed, with the exception of abarrotes and supermercados. The tianguis has reopened with only food stalls. Most government offices are closed. Semana Santa festivities (normally extensive) and the travel/vacation week which follows are cancelled. Here is what our day looks like:

6:30 am: Tucker, the mostly grayed Vizsla who sleeps along my side of the bed, awakes, stretches with a muffled groan (he’s such an old man), shakes his head vigorously to clear the cobwebs (and wake me with the jingle of his dog collar), then walks out to the front door. I can go back to sleep, but he’ll come rest his head on the bed, inches from my face, and make lip-smacking noises (do dogs have lips?), so further sleep is minimal. I walk him to the corner.

6:30-7:30 am: I feed Tucker, and he relishes his everyday breakfast of dog food with chicharrónes like he’s never had it before. I start the coffee, say morning prayers as the dawn breaks, then have a first cup (coffee, not dog food) myself.

7:30 am: Deliver a fresh cup of joe–with a morning song– to my lovely bride. According to her, this routine protects the entire planet. Y’all are welcome.

7:30-9:00 am: Read the Washington Post & New York Times, clear through my news and overnight feeds from select reporters. Spend the last few minutes on Facebook. Take Tucker for his morning constitutional. As Calvin Coolidge might have said, “the business of the dog is dog business.”

~9:00am: Eat a delicious breakfast of bacon & eggs (con tabasco), cherry tomatoes, and a fresh half avocado, lovingly prepared by my dear wife. Clean up the dishes afterwards.

9:00-9:30: clean up for the day, listening to WTOP out of DC for current news (useful), weather (mild humor at times), and traffic (hilarity all the time).

9:30-11:00: Today we go to the small, private gym in our club: thirty minutes (each) stretching, weights, cardio, and yes, we know how lucky we are to have access to this! The gym is small, about the size of a hotel gym, and only permits two people inside at a time. We rarely encounter anyone there, as the hotel rooms are empty. We employ a ritual of cleaning the equipment with a disinfectant wipe before using, then repeating the process again after using. We wash everything upon arriving home. On other days, we hold our Spanish class online using Zoom. Class is much more basic due to the technology, but it suffices to keep our learning fresh. The exercise does the same for our muscles and spirits!

11:00 am – 1:00 pm: Somewhere in here is lunch, if we are not eating dinner. We eat only twice a day, lest we become twice the size. Judy will whip up a royal grilled cheese, with sauteed onions and jalapenos, or a tuna melt (with onions) on a bagel. Always a large serving of chips; Nacho Doritos are my current favorite. Time to read some of the online version of The Economist (I indulged in a subscription back when working, then became addicted to their witty prose and insight), research and write this blog, or catch up on private reading. Today it’s the latter. I have seen many references to the 1940 book by Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory, and it’s available for free download, so I dive in. The intriguing fictional story of a self-proclaimed whisky priest in Mexico during the Cristiada.

At some point, I feel the tropical sun as I pass by an open window, and I remember to go out and water the garden. Our gardener still visits every two weeks, to trim and repair and replace things. We can converse through the mosquito screen on our terraza, and I leave him his pay and receipt book on the table. It’s terribly impersonal, but it keeps him employed and my plumbagos in check. Anyway, I water the plants under the close supervision of Tucker.

The dog will come pester me several times in the afternoon: to go out to the corner and check the day’s new smells, to lay under the sun in the garden, to come back in and get a drink because the sun is soooo hot, to bark at the trash truck. There is wisdom in the fact it doesn’t take much to make him happy.

Somewhere between 1:00 and 3:00, ennui sets in. I’ll play a video game to pass the time. Currently, Medieval France is vanquishing all of Europe, Africa, and the Holy Land, with some help de moi. I notice the dust has coagulated on the table top, making a nice outline of my Chromebook. We’ve paid our housekeeper in advance for the month, but told her to skip her weekly visits for her own good as well as ours. So I clean it off myself. Tomorrow it my be the dust build up on the ceiling fans, or the drip under the disposal, or whatever.

At times, I’ll start a real project, or–worse yet–try to pass one off to Judy. I already sorted the mass of family photos: gone are the many views of my thumbs, pictures of people or places we no longer recognize, and oh-so-many duplicates. The remainder are neatly placed in useful categories for another project: organizing a display, mañana. Judy finished sorting a stack of papers that had grown too large for the cabinet: paid bills, restaurant delivery menus, forms never filled out.

Most days I’ll siesta for about forty-five minutes in the afternoon. Judy claims this is entirely insufficient as a nap, but if I doze more than that, it will throw off my nightly rest. Luckily, I retain the ability to think of a wake up time, fall asleep, then wake up at that time. It’s a habit I perfected back in the Army, and one that I relish still having (unlike my hearing loss, another reminder of Army service).

It’s 4:00 pm, time for television. Now I grew up in the era when television was life’s background soundtrack, so ours may be on at any time, but most of the time I couldn’t tell you what was on. The Five (a guilty pleasure on Fox News, as I enjoy the back-n-forth between the regulars who always disagree but genuinely enjoy arguing with each other. Wait, how many guilty pleasures is that?) leads to the BBC World News America to ABC World News to the PBS Newshour, and suddenly it’s 7:00 pm. Yes, the news addiction I discovered as a young man continues unabated. Between talking back to the TV, I’ll review my email and news feeds and allow myself another thirty minutes of FaceBook.

There’s another, longer walk for the dog in there, whenever I sense the news getting repetitive, which is guaranteed. Another bowl of dog food and chicharrónes met with unbridled enthusiasm.

If we skipped lunch, Judy will perform a miracle combining fresh chicken, spinach, bacon, cream cheese and cheddar cheese with rice for dinner. Or Salmon and Mushrooms & Onions. Or any of the bowl meals we’ve grown accustomed to: egg roll in a bowl, spaghetti in vodka sauce, burrito bowl. I’ll resume cleaning the dishes and taking out the trash, as the sun finally relents in its assault on our westward facing windows.

7:00 to 10:00pm: Decisions, decisions! Its Holy Week, so we watch The Passion of the Christ on DVD. But sometimes I search the Dish satellite service (out of Cincinnati) for anything to watch while Judy enjoys her subscription to Acorn TV by bingeing on Brit dramas. Or we’ll start a new series on Amazon Prime video (e.g., The Expanse, Hunters, Bosch, Picard) and watch it together.

10:00pm: lights out, so to speak. It’s already heating up to the nineties hereabouts, so we turn on the mini-split air conditioner in the bedroom for thirty minutes to cool off the room, as we do our nightly prep for bed. Evening prayers, one last check to make sure I’ve not missed a call or email or something important. Then a drowsy game of solitaire on the tablet. This odd habit was a suggestion from a camino friend, who said to come up with a trick–something to do than was simple and repetitive–to help you fall asleep in a room full of people talking and snoring. Judy and I both took up solitaire apps, and I know it’s time to sleep when the tablet falls from my hand.

There are exceptions to this routine: Video chats with family and friends; the biweekly run to La Huerta, the local mercado, for fresh vegetables and whatever novelty the owner has procured (last week it was canned Italian tomatoes for thirty-eight pesos); longer walks along the nearly-deserted carretera on Sunday night with the dog. Nothing too exciting, but little treats to break the monotony. For a couple of los introvertidos, this stay-at-home thing is barely a challenge. But it’s what we’re supposed to do. What was the quote from Milton?

“When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.“

What changes and what doesn’t?

I’m starting to see interesting articles talking about how life might change after the coronavirus pandemic wanes. It may seem weird–when countries are still experiencing exponential case growth–to be discussing what happens next. But the virus will wane, and whether it’s this Fall or next year, life will return to normal. But what kind of normal?

We have historical examples: the Black Death and the Spanish Flu, two of the worst contagions in history. The Black Death ravaged the world in the 14th century, killing upwards of 200 million people in four years and recurring for centuries. The Spanish Flu hit in three waves between 1918-1920, killed between fifty and one hundred million, while infecting one-quarter of the world’s population. Nothing about CoVid19 approaches either of these cases, but there are interesting lessons from each.

Historians credit the Black Death with hastening the end of feudalism in Europe, undermining the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and fostering the Renaissance. Dead serfs raise no crops, and surviving commoners found more lands, cheaper food, and more opportunities. The death of perhaps half the population in a region wrought great change.

The Spanish flu coincided with the First World War, and came on the heels of several other contagions (e.g., cholera, yellow fever, typhoid). Thus the world’s population was both more accustomed to disease outbreaks, and had a coincidental catastrophe (WWI) which put the tragedy in perspective. Historians point out that there were no great changes from the Spanish Flu, other than the end of the practice of using common cups (which was heretofore common in schools, churches, pubs, etc.), and the nation-state’s assumption of some responsibility for health.

Let’s start with what won’t change. Some predict a flowering of good-neighborliness and caring, based on our shared national tragedy. It saddens me to disagree. Trauma, especially national trauma, rarely causes such change. For every individual who suffers a heart attack and changes his diet for the better, there are far more who resume a bacon-and-beer diet (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Cities that are massively disrupted–like New Orleans in Katrina–may look a little different, but quickly revert to character. How long did the bipartisan national spirit last after 9/11? After trauma, people seek normalcy, which they define as what it was like before. So I doubt the Age of Aquarius is around the corner.

Some things I expect:

The forced march to telework should prove to skeptical bosses that workers can indeed work outside their direct view, sparking increased adoption (Voluntary, part-time, but an increasingly available option).
Ditto for telemedicine. It works even better for routine stuff and it keeps you and everyone else from exposure.
Government will get larger, at least temporarily. The Economist suggests this is normal in the modern era and likely this time. I agree in the near-term, but I question whether it will hold in the long term, or for all nations.
In addition to testing and early action to quarantine, one of the keys of South Korea’s (and Singapore’s) apparently successful response to CoVid19 was extensive use of electronic tracking and surveillance. While I don’t see this becoming widespread under normal circumstances, I think it will be a standard epidemic response among capable governments in the future.
Businesses will reassess “just-in-time” delivery of supplies, perhaps increasing the number/diversity of suppliers and/or capability to stockpile essential items. Nations likewise will reevaluate the strategic implications of allowing so much production to be centered in a single nation (China) and perhaps re-shore (i.e., bring home) production of things like pharmaceuticals. Cheaper is cheaper, not always better.
The contagion will “thin the herd” economically. Small businesses working on weak margins or large ones with underlying cash-flow or business process conditions will go bankrupt (especially true for restaurants). So there will still be plenty of planes and cruise ships, but fewer companies. I don’t foresee the end of the cruise industry, though. Those cheap vacations will look pretty good when they are safe again, and the surviving cruise lines will offer extreme deals to restart the business.
Streaming services are winners; cinemas were already in trouble, this might kill them. There will always be some movie theaters for special viewings, opening nights, etc. But their monopoly on content was eroding and is now gone, and with that, ten-dollar popcorn.
I would bet that US federal government will enact mandatory paid sick leave, as the challenge of workers who have to go to work sick was highlighted in the early stages of the pandemic.
Most countries will review medical stockpiles, policies, and preparations for testing. Taiwan was hard hit by SARS and did the same, and it fared much better (apparently) this time. Why the US stockpile wasn’t refilled after the 2009 H1N1 outbreak (through two administrations and multiple Congresses) will be an interesting review.
Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals will be heroes to a new generation of Americans, deservedly so. Look to increased interest in and pay for the field. Also, the medical profession will play a decisive role in any future discussions about nationalizing health. I’ll let you guess how that will play out.
Celebrities, social influencers, and athletes will be relative losers. They will always play a role in public opinion and entertainment, but we all learned to live without them, and their attempts to gain attention or empathize with the rest of the world have fallen flat.
Going out on a limb here, but maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a reckoning for those people and media who sensationalize everything. People who take a political view of every situation, those who ascribe to conspiracy theories, those who share bogus health guidance, media who exaggerate for effect: all need to be rightly shunned. Partisan sites have not done as well during the crisis. I hope the fact-checkers have a field day when this is all over. Re-reading what I just wrote, I would put this more in the “wished for” than likely category.

The biggest single change? A loss in fervor for the dominant faith. The Black death was a blow to medieval Catholicism. The Spanish Flu undermined the social-Darwinist and eugenics movements, while also undercutting the health professionals who had no answer (bacteria were well understood, while viruses were only beginning to be understood). But what is our dominant faith today?

If you’re talking about the United States, I would describe the faith as combination of rugged individualism and laissez-faire capitalism. How does that faith get shaken? This gets very tricky. The default condition would be to return (as per my earlier comment) to the status quo ante virus. But fear spread alongside the coronavirus, and it will leave a residue. That fear, in breathless headlines and apocalyptic videos, was existential. Look at what we spent our time arguing or caring about and ask yourself: was it worth it? Transgender bathrooms? NYSE 30,0000? Ukraine quid pro quo? Supreme Court positions? The Oscars?

I could certainly see a political realignment coming out of this pandemic. Changed parties? More parties? Demographic moves within parties? I can’t tell what form it will take. If you think you know how it plays out, I bet you thought you knew who would win in 2016.

Does society engage in more frivolous and nihilistic behavior like the roaring 20’s? Do we gain a new political movement aimed at the center and eschewing the extremes?

It is too early to tell about this one, and I welcome your thoughts. Remember, whatever we say here, it’s on record! I’ll revisit this post in one year to see how things turned out.

A different way to look at the pandemic

Back in the paleolithic era (circa 1995), I worked long-range analysis for the Chief of Staff, US Army. I wrote a think piece about the internet. The prevailing view was there would be a “digital divide” based on access. A second, less widely-held opinion was that internet access would become a public utility (like water): so essential, it would be ubiquitous. I held to the second view, and postulated that there would still be a “digital divide,” only that this divide would be between the people who could understand and act on the digital information firehose (call them digitals), and those that couldn’t (that is, digitally disabled). It might be too early to tell, but I think I got it right (even a blind squirrel finds a nut on occasion).

Fast forward to today and our coronavirus quarantine in a fully digital world. We’re bombarded with info about the pandemic: on TV, from social media, in online news feeds. What do we believe? What should we act on? How to process all this . . . stuff? In the next two posts, I’ll try to give you a frame of reference. Today, I will focus on figuring out what we know, don’t know, and can assume. Next post, I’ll pull out the crystal ball (I took it with me in retirement) and suggest what might happen after we’re all done with the coronavirus (whenever that is).

The digitally disabled are the ones sharing stories from friends of friends on social media, often with impressive credentials (CoVid Task Force Director, or Senior CDC researcher) full of “do this, don’t do that advice.” If you search, you can never find these original sources. If you fact-check the advice, you’ll find it is a mix of common sense and outright fabrication. What you can find are the authoritative websites of the CDC, WHO et al and what they really say. I find the Johns Hopkins site and the Financial Times graphs very helpful. Be a digital, and track the sources.

The same advice applies to the news. News reports, like early reports from the battlefield or eyewitness accounts of a crime, are invariably not quite right. Maybe not totally wrong, but still not right. I have run across several verifiable accounts from emergency room doctors that are very interesting, but I don’t share them widely, because although they are real, they are fragmentary: something perhaps true at a point in time, but not the whole story. And nobody has the whole story, yet. Even the data we have are very suspect: in some cases because the sources are bad, in others because we don’t know what to count.

What do I mean? Are mortality rates good data? Suppose someone with advanced Alzheimer’s disease catches CoVid19 and dies: from which did they die? If someone is not tested for CoVid19 and dies with flu-like symptoms, does it count as a seasonal flu or coronavirus fatality? What about data concerning confirmed cases of coronavirus? China just admitted it hasn’t been reporting asymptomatic cases. Imagine a hypothetical country which refuses to do any CoVid19 testing (like North Korea): they will have zero confirmed cases, just a very bad flu season! So we have to very, very careful about the data. And have a little sympathy for doctors and political leaders trying to make life-or-death policy decisions in a period of very sketchy data!

Here’s an example from the Financial Times website (a good source, just to show you how little even good sources can know):

I used this earlier version of the data because it includes the # days criteria lines. Their latest graphs do not.

This chart shows death rates as of Sunday, March 29th. You might infer that the US is doing worse, since our rate is accelerating (based on the slope). France and Spain were doing still worse, although their slopes indicate things are improving. China and Iran are doing ok; Japan is doing great. Except China is lying, Iran is clueless, and Japan has been accused of deflating its numbers (their numbers jumped immediately after they postponed the Olympics). Yes, all these data are provided by the national governments. The real story to this graph: most everybody is bunched between reported deaths doubling every two and three days. Those are the margins we’re working with, and much of the variability can be explained by demography, culture, health care resources, and population density, which are all long-term givens, as opposed to crisis policies.

Here’s another one from FT, this time with cumulative cases:

Here the US trend is better (see the curve bending?) although we have the most cases (look out, here comes Turkey!). But again, notice that the entire world is bunched between doubling-every-two-to four days.

The outlier in all this is South Korea, where the data are probably pretty good and the results outstanding. Many cite the early testing they did as key, but forget South Korea (1) is a compact country the size of Indiana with a density twenty times the US (2) has a population that is younger, healthier, and more compliant, and (3) instituted draconian control measures like mandatory locator services (using cell phones) with fines and jail time. Imagine that working in New York!

You probably have seen the R0 (called “R nought”, around two) for coronavirus mentioned: it is the rate of infectability, or how many people on average does an infected person infect. R0 is based on all kinds of solid assumptions, but as one medical researched commented, it is a variable: an infected person in a room all alone who never comes in contact with anyone has an R0 of zero. How does an R0 of two work out? Quarantine measures can slow the infection, and assuming those recovered are immune (not proven), eventually the pandemic subsides, but not before almost all of the planet has been exposed. See, it’s not about not getting CoVid19: many if not most will. It’s all about making sure not everybody gets sick at the same time in the same place, overwhelming emergency medical resources (which drives up the fatality rate). Oh, and if/when we get a vaccine, of course, the lucky few can be protected.

We need ventilators, right now. They are not difficult to build, but every machine has to be tested, so of course we also need to ramp up testing devices and people to run the tests. Unless we want to use untested machines, in which case we might want to change our liability laws (in the notably litigious States), because some device is going to malfunction, and there will be a class action lawsuit. Wonder why some firms are not so excited to be building a device in such high demand?

But then there is the little problem of the outcomes for ventilator patients. If you need a ventilator and can’t get one, you are probably going to die. However, data on ventilator use for ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, which results from CoVid19 among other things) are that about forty-to-sixty percent of all patients on ventilators still die. Total numbers of ventilators is a meaningless statistic: what matter is the number available at a given hospital at a specific time. Over time, we can move the ventilators from place to place.

So be very careful about drawing conclusions from any of the data, especially national data. Countries are not uniform in size, density, government honesty or culture norms, nor in when their epidemic started. Let alone the various policy options they choose. When all is said and done, there should be enough good data to make comparisons. Those who try to do so now will look foolish, for a good reason.

Enough of the complications: what do we know, and can we assume? The following data points and conclusions have been consistent over time:

Social distancing can flatten the curve and delay the number of cases in a given location at a given time, which is all important.
Eighty percent of people infected with CoVid19 are either asymptomatic (perhaps twenty-five percent!) or have flu-like symptoms. This is why the CDC is considering having everybody wear masks: there may be a sizable group of infected people walking around without symptoms. Some of us may have already recovered from CoVid19 and not know it! Most people who are infected will feel sick; a much smaller group will feel really, really sick. Only about five percent require hospitalization.
The issue of intensive care and ventilators is primarily for those with pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure. From another direction, seventy-eight percent of those infected who ended up in intensive care had a pre-existing condition. Even the preliminary data on deaths among the young point to pre-existing conditions (especially obesity).
Widespread viral testing (whether you have the virus) is necessary but not sufficient; we also need antibody or serum testing to confirm who already has had the virus (assuming it provides immunity, which is likely). The combination of these two types of tests provides a path back to normal life. As my son-in-law surmised, we might soon (and for a year or two) be walking around with disease passports which certify why we’re allowed out and about.

That would be quite a change, but who would rather stay in quarantine while the economy grinds to a complete halt? Would such a change be permanent? I’ll explore that with my next post!

The Deep State vs Anonymous

This is a nonpartisan post, believe it or not.

Most of the country is divided into two camps. The first camp sees an outsider President trying to “drain the swamp” and being thwarted by a conspiracy of bureaucrats dubbed “the Deep State.” The second camp sees a proto-fascist “Stable Genius” held in check by the likes of courageous, patriotic bureaucrats like the character Anonymous (insider author of articles and books about thwarting the President).

Looking at those two statements, you might conclude that if one side is correct, the other must be wrong. This is normally the case with two apparently exclusive theses. I would like to suggest a third possibility: both are wrong, at least about the bureaucracy.

Before I do, let me state my bona fides. I worked within that federal bureaucracy for thirty-eight years. I attended nearly every available type of training for bureaucrats, from the typing course offered by the Department of Transportation (it never took!) to the Federal Executive Institute, the Harvard Seminar, and the National War College. I worked in three different Departments and an independent office. I attended countless interagency meetings from windowless rooms in Langley to the marble halls of the Old Executive Office building to the White House SitRoom. I served under every President from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama. Over half my career was in positions of executive authority, where I got to meet with leaders (political appointees and career civil service) across the government bureaucracy and help make decisions about “the sausage.”

New administrations often distrust the career bureaucrats who welcome them to power. I participated in the transition team from Bush ’43 to Obama, and I guarantee you it happened then. It is hard for some incoming political appointees and staffers to grasp the concept of a nonpartisan group of technocratic experts there to “help you.” If you come from the political world, there are two sides: the “good guys” and the opponent to be defeated. There is no room for neutrals on the sideline. It is equally difficult for political types to understand when the bureaucrats tell them “we will do every (legal) thing in our power to make your policies succeed, including telling you when they are misguided or likely to fail. But we will do so privately–to you–and not in a manner supporting any particular political perspective.” (The word “legal” in that last sentence is very important, but there are oodles of lawyers and ombuds ((I was one for thousands of analysts)) there to assist any bureaucrat who wonders where the line is–it is not a decision anyone needs to make by themselves!)

The politicos may be distrusting, yet this is exactly how the bureaucracy works. It isn’t that the bureaucrats don’t have political beliefs, and don’t bring some bias to the table. Rather, they subsume those personal views in order to support the legal–there that word is again–policies of the duly-elected or appointed officials. That is the way the federal government is supposed to work, and the way that it does work, even today . . . mostly.

So there is no Deep State. Nothing that has happened so far in the Trump administration requires a Deep State in order to be explained. What about the “Russia hoax?” I have spent hours reading every document about that story: the Steele dossier, the Mueller report, the Horowitz IG report, various FOIA releases from the DOJ, FBI, etc., the dueling reports from all the relevant House and Senate committees. What happened, if not a conspiracy to ensure Mr. Trump was never elected or impeached if he was?

Simple. A small group of FBI counterintelligence analysts and the senior executives who supervised them saw what they are always looking for: a “Tom Clancy” style Manchurian candidacy that they were going to expose and become heroes. They went after it with a passion, even skewing the FISA process and swallowing whole the dossier which is so rife with error as to be laughable. In hindsight, they got caught up in the very real Russian attempts to divide the electorate and thought they had found the super-secret pièce de résistance: a Putin mole named Donald Trump. No conspiracy, just overzealous analysts with poor leadership. There is a reason one outcome from this entire affair was the Attorney General’s decision to limit the ability of his agents to begin such an investigation of a Presidential candidacy: previously, it required nothing more than a single executive to initiate!

I have friends who share “Q” or Q Anon” material on social media, and I have yet to see a single thing which (1) makes any sense and (2) isn’t easily explainable by means other than a Deep State. I invite anyone unfamiliar with Occam’s Razor to click on the link: vast, intricate conspiracies make great novels or Netflix dramas, real life is far more mundane and explicable. Most administrations have a cadre of former government officials who can help facilitate the relationship with the bureaucracy; this one has few. Thus this administration is uniquely suited to seeing any disagreement or discussion of countervailing issues as disloyal or political. That doesn’t make it so.

By now my MAGA buddies are considering unfriending me while my Progressive amigos are high-fiving: not so fast, my friends!

Before anyone gets too excited, no one should celebrate the actions of Anonymous (the writer detailing a resistance to the administration within the bureaucracy). This is not principled action or even peaceful noncompliance. If someone in the bureaucracy disagrees with a policy, they can (1) go to the IG or ombuds and file a complaint, (2) resign, or (3) swallow it and do their job. Actively trying to undermine the policy is NOT a morally acceptable option.

For one thing, I have heard so many times that ‘what Trump just did is unconstitutional’ only to have the issue adjudicated by the courts as . . . constitutional. You may disagree with it, but you (as a bureaucrat) don’t get a say on it; the courts do. Second, I hear ‘Trump’s action is unprecedented so (I get to do something unprecedented too).’ I think we all learned how wrong this logic is in kindergarten, not to mention I often find precedents for the actions which negate the premise. Notice nothing I said suggests the policies are good or that you (as a bureaucrat) have to like them. Just they are legal and you cannot undermine them.

Furthermore, the public disclosures suggesting an active effort to thwart the administration in fact undermine the nonpartisan character of the career civil service. As I said, in the best of times, we had to convince new administrations we were there “to help.” That will be infinitely more difficult in the future. This goes double for the many former senior leaders who are so active now in media. I understand they feel the times are perilous and demand action. I ask only that they consider the long-term ramifications for the career civil service, and limit their very public criticism to when it is absolutely necessary. Which would not be every night on the round of talking-head shows.

Or publicly endorsing candidates. Think it’s not a growing problem? Check out this WaPo article. I know (and respect) many of these people. It is not that past leaders of the civil service didn’t face serious challenges. Just to keep it within living memory, Watergate anyone? Grouping together and endorsing a candidate–nay, more so explicitly opposing the sitting President–is the type of partisan activity poisonous to the standing of the bureaucracy.

It is true these individuals retain a first amendment right to offer political opinions. But not everything we HAVE the right to do IS right to do. It is one thing to imagine a hypothetical situation where only members of the civil service were privy to something, and therefore believed they had an obligation to make it public. That’s what happened with the whistleblower and subsequent impeachment. I disagreed with how serious that issue was, but not with the whistleblower making a complaint. But what we see now is political complaints coming from the bureaucracy (past or present), and it is not like there isn’t plenty of criticism already.

Some career civil servants have chosen to resign and explain their decisions publicly. This is appropriate and honorable, whether one agrees with their reasoning or not. In the end, their choices to act within the system (and leave it) support the nonpartisan nature of the civil service, even if they are publically critical.

On the other hand, there is leaking classified information. Now there’s a story citing government officials stating the intelligence community provided warning of the nature of the coronavirus and the inadequacy of China’s response back in January. Assuming this is true, kudos to the community; job well done. However, the fact that this information has now been leaked to the press? For what purpose? There is no value in this information in responding to the virus today. When we are safely past this crisis, we need an in-depth investigation of who-knew-what-when and what-did-they-do/not do. This is a leak of sensitive intelligence information solely for the purpose of criticizing the administration’s response. And some wonder why others see a conspiracy.

One side claims the public disclosures of Anonymous prove there is a Deep State, while the other side suggests it is patriotic and shows the need for active resistance by the bureaucracy. Such reasoning evinces the greater danger: the politicization of the career civil service bureaucracy, much to our collective regret.

The nonpartisan career civil service is a treasure. If you scoff at that comment, read a history of the federal government in the 19th century before civil service reform: a stinking mass of corruption and nepotism likely to ruin everything it touched. Today’s civil service is full of dedicated experts trying their best to work in the public’s interest. A real tragedy would ensue if we let our political differences lead to politicizing the federal bureaucracy: that would truly be a national disaster.

Things to do in Quarantine

The Governor of Jalisco asked everyone in the state to observe a 5 day stay-at-home quarantine, with the exception of going out to get food or medicine. It is a pretty mild measure compared to what’s being introduced in the States and Canada, and certainly a taste of the future, given the arrival of CoVid19 here on a plane from Vail, Colorado. I thought I would start posting some of the interesting ways you can fill the time, with an emphasis on how the internet and online resources can help, since this is the first global quarantine to occur with those resources available. Feel free to add in any interesting resources you know/use in the comments!

In terms of news, the New York Times and Washington Post are providing all CoVid19 coverage free, so you can access them to keep up to date. If you choose to read their political commentary, that’s up to you! For data on the outbreak, I still find the best tracker to be this one from Johns Hopkins. Another amazing source for data hounds is the free coverage from the Financial Times; they have country data arrayed on a series of graphs, and they use logarithmic scales, as is appropriate for exponential rates (but of course, you knew that!). Of course, the CDC homepage is the place to go for any talk of tests, treatments, and cures. Please don’t rely on FaceBook friends of friends for your medical advice!

Looking for something to read? If you have a library card, your local library probably already offers you a download option, but there’s also Overdrive, Project Gutenberg (which has many classics), and the US Library of Congress. These are the times that try men’s souls, so pick up Paine’s pamphlets or perhaps War & Peace, since all you have is time!

Had enough surfing and reading, now you need to DO something? The International Space Station comes round every hour and a half or so. Use this site to track it, then pour yourself a nice glass of wine and go watch it on its next nighttime pass overhead (no telescope needed). Ponder for a moment those brave men and women who willingly go up there to a quarantine of sorts all the time.

Need to be even more active? Here’s a link to the Wall Street Journal’s list of workouts (with more links in it). Wait, you can’t get past the paywall? Anytime you run into that problem, go to this website and input the URL from the blocked page; most times they have an archived copy! And here is Good Housekeeping’s list of free livestream workout classes.

Getting back to your computer, you can become the family historian pretty quickly using Ancestry and checking out Genealogy.com or FamilySearch. Even if all you have is a few names, you’ll quickly be amazed at the data available now online, and better yet, you may be one of the lucky ones whose family has already been researched by some distant relative!

Maybe try out some new/old games? There is a website called Old-games which has thousands of what’s called “abandonware” programs. These are old computer games from as far back as the 1980s that have been updated to run on modern computers and available for download (free if you pick a slow download option, a minimal fee otherwise). Excellent time-killers, and maybe a little nostalgia: I found a game I played on my Commodore 64!

Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all of the religious resources. I am sure every major faith is online in a big way, but for Catholics, there is a site with links to live broadcasts of the Mass in English, as well as the Holy Rosary, and the breviary. Your diocese probably subscribes to Formed, an online network full of movies, documentaries and the like; check with your parish!The Magnificat, an online resource for daily prayers and more, is offering free access during the crisis. Even if you’re spiritual but not religious, just watching these events can help bring your blood pressure down. Try this YouTube selection of Gregorian chant: can’t fail to relax!

Got a gap in your edge-ah-ma-cation? There is probably something you don’t know, or want to learn, at The Great Courses. These cost money, but they are on sale right now! Free courses are available from many sources, such as Harvard, MIT, Coursera, and OpenLearn. No need to certify or stress about the test, but perhaps a way to structure some of your time to a meaningful end.

If you insist on checking out social media, perhaps spend a few minutes first at the home of the media bias chart. This respected resource shows where common media sources lie on a scale of fact vs. propaganda and left vs. right ideology. You may not agree with exactly where they place everything, but rest assured, if you’re reading things way to the left or right–or anything on the bottom of the chart–you’re probably wasting your time.

That’s all for now. Again, please add your ideas/suggestions in the comments!

New colors

Sea Glass with a darker green accent for the fireplace. You can make out the yellow of the courtyard, too.

Judy and I just spent the last three weeks hosting a group of between six and eight Mexican workers who completed several projects, most notably, painting our entire house, inside and out. They were with us from 8:30 in the morning until 5:30-6:00 in the evening, Monday through Friday, with a half day on Saturday. They did great work, including painting behind several climbing plants, even two rose bushes. Every night, they cleaned up and moved things so we could resume using rooms as they finished.

With all the strangers coming and going, our dog thought we had lost our collective minds, although after all this time, he has decided está bien. The workers really were quite considerate, but I have to say that three weeks of people wandering around our house was enough. Not to mention we’re out of Coca Cola. And Mexico is just starting to enforce social distancing and closures and the like, so the timing actually worked well.

Another accent wall down the hallway. The sunlight makes the walls seem mottled with yellow, but they are sea glass.

Our house was still the original beige we chose eight years ago, so it was time for some accent painting and a little color. And we had some salitre to fix. For those unfamiliar, salitre (literally saltpeter) is a peculiar problem here in Mexico. It’s a condition where moisture works its way up from the soil through the foundation and into the concrete and brick walls, leading to paint peeling and cracking. I’ve heard several unconvincing explanations for why it happens, and even more unconventional–if not nonsensical–treatments. In the end, you scrape, treat, seal and repaint when it bothers you enough.

Our pallete is a combination of sea glass with a darker green for accents. We added a red accent wall in one bathroom. The bedrooms are from the same general pallete, but are deep blue, purple and gray. For the outside we kept the same bright yellow (it also shows up inside on our terraza and the atrium), except we used a better quality of paint with a full primer base that should last longer. The tropical sun is murder on your exteriors here; we just repainted after only three years!

So we’ll begin social distancing in our freshly re-painted house. At least the colors are soothing!